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A Baroque Concert
Monday, October 13th, 2014 03:16 pmOn Friday we treated ourselves to a bit of impromptu culture.
Furtle has long been of the opinion that we should do more to take advantage of London while we live and work here, on the basis that our long term aim is to do neither. So, on occasion, we have taken in an art gallery or a museum, or on other Fridays, just taken the bus to the West End and poked around in posh shops to see how the knobs live. In theory we would be doing something at least nominally kultural every Friday, but in effect we often just slope off home to the Gin Palace and gratefully shut the world out for as much of the forthcoming 48 hours as we can manage.
This weekend just past we actually managed to get out and do something. It wasn’t cheap, but it was fun.
It is many years since I last visited St Martin-in-the-Fields (it might well have been in-the-fields when it was built, back in the 1720s, but these days not so much, being on Trafalgar Square and all) and I’d been meaning to go back, but for some reason never got around to it. Anyway, it transpires that the regular concert for this last Friday was a couple of hours of Bach (both JS and CPE) and Vivaldi with a bit of Pachelbel thrown in for good measure. Now I like me a bit of yer old baroque, so we got tickets and went.
Thoroughly recommended, though not too often, unless that’s all you blow your entertainment budget on. Tickets at between £18 and £25 a head for a couple of hours aren’t, I suppose, too outrageous, but it does make you pause when you’re coughing it up unexpectedly. I don’t know whether or not is was because we booked in advance (if only a few hours in advance), but I also got a voucher worth 10% off the price of purchases in the café/restaurant in the crypt. There was very little opportunity for us to use it, but we had a glass of wine each. The break was only 20 minutes and we lost about half that queuing. Some old stagers bought themselves meals, but unless these meals come with antacids, it’s hard to see how it would be possible to eat them comfortably in the time available, regardless of how well they were made. At this point, however, I should note that the crypt was doing a very interesting apple (?) crumble and jug of custard, which I might investigate next time.
In the first session, Furtle had to grumble at a young woman who plonked herself down next to her and proceeded to text away on her iPhone every couple of minutes. If looks could kill, I think Furtle would have been wounded, but she held her ground and Ms Attention Deficit failed to reappear for the second period’s performance.
We have now booked to go again just before Christmas, but this time mob-handed. It will of course, be seasonal fayre. I’m less enthused by that, but the performance stuff will be okay. Once the audience participation carol sing-along starts though, I think I shall absent myself downstairs with a book and a glass of wine. I discovered the hard way last year that I really do not enjoy singing at carol concerts.
I shall, of course, be quite happy to go again and listen to non-festive music, particularly if it is more of the baroque.
Furtle has long been of the opinion that we should do more to take advantage of London while we live and work here, on the basis that our long term aim is to do neither. So, on occasion, we have taken in an art gallery or a museum, or on other Fridays, just taken the bus to the West End and poked around in posh shops to see how the knobs live. In theory we would be doing something at least nominally kultural every Friday, but in effect we often just slope off home to the Gin Palace and gratefully shut the world out for as much of the forthcoming 48 hours as we can manage.
This weekend just past we actually managed to get out and do something. It wasn’t cheap, but it was fun.
It is many years since I last visited St Martin-in-the-Fields (it might well have been in-the-fields when it was built, back in the 1720s, but these days not so much, being on Trafalgar Square and all) and I’d been meaning to go back, but for some reason never got around to it. Anyway, it transpires that the regular concert for this last Friday was a couple of hours of Bach (both JS and CPE) and Vivaldi with a bit of Pachelbel thrown in for good measure. Now I like me a bit of yer old baroque, so we got tickets and went.
Thoroughly recommended, though not too often, unless that’s all you blow your entertainment budget on. Tickets at between £18 and £25 a head for a couple of hours aren’t, I suppose, too outrageous, but it does make you pause when you’re coughing it up unexpectedly. I don’t know whether or not is was because we booked in advance (if only a few hours in advance), but I also got a voucher worth 10% off the price of purchases in the café/restaurant in the crypt. There was very little opportunity for us to use it, but we had a glass of wine each. The break was only 20 minutes and we lost about half that queuing. Some old stagers bought themselves meals, but unless these meals come with antacids, it’s hard to see how it would be possible to eat them comfortably in the time available, regardless of how well they were made. At this point, however, I should note that the crypt was doing a very interesting apple (?) crumble and jug of custard, which I might investigate next time.
In the first session, Furtle had to grumble at a young woman who plonked herself down next to her and proceeded to text away on her iPhone every couple of minutes. If looks could kill, I think Furtle would have been wounded, but she held her ground and Ms Attention Deficit failed to reappear for the second period’s performance.
We have now booked to go again just before Christmas, but this time mob-handed. It will of course, be seasonal fayre. I’m less enthused by that, but the performance stuff will be okay. Once the audience participation carol sing-along starts though, I think I shall absent myself downstairs with a book and a glass of wine. I discovered the hard way last year that I really do not enjoy singing at carol concerts.
I shall, of course, be quite happy to go again and listen to non-festive music, particularly if it is more of the baroque.